Islam: The Straight Path – John L. Esposito [1998] – Chapter 3: Religious Life – Belief and Practice (Pt 3)

Below you will find my notes and random observations from the book indicated by the title of this post. It is hoped that it will be effortless to differentiate between those locations in which I provide information from the book proper and those in which I offer personal observation, illumination or pose further lines of inquiry. Whenever any doubt is evident it should be assumed that anything even remotely factual should be attributed to the author of the book and anything that would be construed as otherwise can be attributed to me personally.

Links to related posts: (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3])



Muslim Family Law

Before the introduction of Islam, Arabic family customs regarded women largely as property. One male head ruled over one or more wives with any married sons and their families. Divorce was as simple as stating the desire to be divorced and the woman had no rights or say in the matter.

Islamic law has as its cornerstone a respect for the role of marriage and family and a deep seated concern for the welfare of the wife. Marriages, often arranged by the families far in advance, were considered contracts not only between two individuals but agreements between the families themselves. Quranic law also gave women the right to arrange their own marriage contracts and to keep her dower for herself rather than giving it up to her husband. Most importantly women gained the right to inherit property, an innovation that only firmly established itself in the west in the early 20th century. Men were admonished to take up to four wives but only if they could demonstrate that they could care for them all equitably and provide them separate housing in accordance with the family’s means. This typically meant a room of their own or more rarely an entire house.

However even with Quranic admonitions, women were still not considered equals. Early Muslim society still suffered from centuries of traditional behaviors which took some time for the populous to unlearn. Further, since the roles of man and woman were very strictly defined with the man taking care of outside affairs while the woman focused on the home, some inequities still exist such as the fact that the eyewitness accounts of two women count only as much as one male account of identical quality.

Divorce also became more difficult under Islam and according to the Quran, divorce is the most reprehensible act that is not strictly forbidden. Traditionally, the man could divorce the woman with just a word while the woman must go to court and prove her grounds to be granted her request. Traditional Muslim divorce took three very similar forms, each actionable by the husband:

1. A single pronouncement of the phrase, “I divorce you” was sufficient to divorce a wife though there was a requisite three month waiting period before the act was final. The delay was intended to assure that the wife wasn’t with child before the dissolution.
2. Similarly, three pronouncements of the phrase in three consecutive months would actuate a legal separation. Once the final month had passed the act was final and the couple could not remarry unless the wife married someone else first and consummated that relationship.
3. Lastly, and most problematically, the husband can merely declare three times in immediate succession and the divorce is final and immediate. This is seen as antithetical to the Quran which admonishes husbands to wait three months for the reasons stated in method one above.

The other Muslim tradition most familiar to Westerners is the hijub, or chader, the wearing of burqa and veils to hide all but the eyes and hands of women. While not strictly prescribed by Islam, this tradition acquired from conquered Persian and Byzantine lands does fulfill the Quranic requirement to “speak from behind a screen and be modest.” Unfortunately, this tradition combined with the purdah, or seclusion of women, has had a vast and deleterious impact on women themselves. This separation from the outside world has in some cases left them ignorant even of their duties to God.

Popular Religion

Islam has in its history also enjoyed a wide variety of variation in practice. As we’ve seen in earlier sections, Muslim adherence ranges extremely literal to much more relaxed. At the end of Chapter 3 our author introduces us to the Sufi. The Sufi are Muslim mystics much like traditional western monks. They lived isolated ascetic lifestyles in an attempt to connect directly with God. By blocking out all worldly distractions they hope to be directly and personally inspired. In 1058, Abu Hamid al-Ghazuli was born and he was to become to great unifier of the Sufi religion with mainstream Islam. Al-Ghazuli was a successful lecturer until one day he was mysteriously struck mute. In personal anguish at his loss, he retreated into the wilderness and there became a Sufi and thereafter their greatest spokesperson (at least in writing.)

After al-Ghazuli, Sufi practices started to see widespread acceptance. In pursuit of a connection with God, the Sufi practiced four basic methods of self-purification:

1. Self-denial – poverty, fasting, silence. It was believed that only by stripping away earthly desires and distractions could one come to truly know God.
2. Repetition of a Mantra – often the Sufi would repeat the names of God hundreds of thousands of times in a sitting
3. Song and Dance – it was believed that through music one could become intoxicated by the presence of God. The most famous of the Sufi dances is that of the Whirling Dervishes which reenacts the motion of the celestial bodies around the sun(? Would they have had a Heliocentric view of the universe at this time? We’re talking about 1100 AD.)
4. Veneration of Muhammad and the Sufi saints – it was believed that the saints provided a link between God and mankind

Unfortunately for the Sufi, their methods of worship gradually came to be their undoing. Much of their practices came to be considered heretical and by the 17th century they had become a repressed minority.

Similarly, the Shii also venerate special humans as god-like in the person of the Imams. While the Sunni reject any such notion vehemently, the Shii recognize 14 pure or perfect ones: The prophet and his immediate family along with the 9 Imams. The Imams have their birthdays and death anniversaries celebrated yearly by the Shii faithful.

Another central figure of Shii faith is Prince Husayn who was martyred in the year 680. The town of Kafa called to the Prince to save them from a tyrant. The Prince left Mecca with a procession of only 77 followers but upon his arrival he is greeted by an army of Syrians in the tens of thousands. His small band is quickly overwhelmed but not before the Prince’s brother Hasan killed 3,000 Syrian soldiers single-handedly. As the Prince is making one final charge to the attack he is suddenly called back to his camp where his women await him. While on his way he is attacked by a group of cowardly archers who riddle him with hundreds of arrows. Husayn along with his mother Fatima are held up as elite examples of proper Muslim behavior.

Textual Note: Items in this post are noted in the order they appear in the book. Oddly, this is resulted in a somewhat fragmented presentation of the material. At a later date this will be revised into one longer volume with arranges the information presented in a more topically logical manner.

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Islam: The Straight Path – John L. Esposito [1998] – Chapter 3: Religious Life – Belief and Practice (Pt 2)

Below you will find my notes and random observations from the book indicated by the title of this post. It is hoped that it will be effortless to differentiate between those locations in which I provide information from the book proper and those in which I offer personal observation, illumination or pose further lines of inquiry. Whenever any doubt is evident it should be assumed that anything even remotely factual should be attributed to the author of the book and anything that would be construed as otherwise can be attributed to me personally.

Links to related posts: (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3])

During Muslim history there existed many regional schools of law but by the 19th century these had been reduced to four to represent the Sunni faith: the Hanafi, the Hanbali, the Maliki and the Shafi. These four schools have as their jurisdiction large geographic areas. Due to previously mentioned doctrinal differences, the Shii have pursued their own schools of law, the Jafari being foremost among them. Both schools of thought accept the Quran and the Sunna of the prophet but the Shii reject the establishment of law by consensus and by analogy. Instead the balance of the law is derived from the sunna and judgment of the infallible Imam, or failing that, the decision of his religious representatives.

To enforce the laws set forth by the schools, a system of courts was established. Muslim courts differ from western ones in a few key ways:

• Judges act only to interpret the law, not set precedent for future cases
• Two male witnesses are required for any crime. If this is not available then the crime must be sworn to “in front of God”(?) Note: The text is not terribly clear on this point and I’m further unsure how much this applies to modern courts versus traditional ones.
• No circumstantial evidence is allowed
• No witness cross examination is allowed
• Decisions are final with no appeal, though all decisions are reviewed by the Caliph. Note: Again, I’m not sure how much this applies to the modern day, though these courts only deal with matters of religious law rather than smaller civil matters which we’ll get into a bit further along.

The courts enforced the laws with the help of the muhtasib, a religious police force which still exists in some countries (Saudia Arabia, Kuwait and presumably others) and has recently seen a resurgence in others (Pakistan and Iran).

In addition to the Muslim courts, the Grievance Courts were set up to deal with matters of a more civil nature. The only real restriction on the laws for the Grievance Courts is that they must not directly conflict with Sharia. Generally, these courts deal with such matters as taxation, criminal law and business regulation.

The underlying premise of the law in general is that God is the leader and sole legislator of all human action. Islamic law is intended to be absolutely egalitarian without regard to race, creed or social stature. The actions which the law governs fall into two basic categories:

• Duties to God – prayer, almsgiving, fasting, etc
• Duties to Others – penal, commercial and family law

The Duties to God are represented by what is referred to as the Five Pillars of Islam:

1. Profession of faith – simply speaking, one must acknowledge that there is one God and that Muhammad is his prophet. The only unforgiveable sin is that of associating God with some other entity (such as Jesus) as this is viewed as polytheistic.
2. Prayer – Five times a day (dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, dusk and evening), the muezzin, or call to prayer sounds from a mosque and Muslims must face Mecca and pray. Each time of day has a set ritual that includes 2-4 positions and specific prayers which must be recited. On Fridays, all gather for prayers in a central Mosque. Men are required to attend but women are optional. If women do attend they stand at the back (often behind a curtain) to preserve their modesty during the proceedings. Friday is not traditionally a day of rest but in some countries has begun to replace the Christian Sunday tradition.
3. Almsgiving – Every Muslim is required to give 2.5% of his accumulated wealth to the poor each year. Note that this differs from income but is instead a percentage of whatever you have on hand. It’s unclear to me if the assessment of wealth includes only ready cash or also personal property. Traditionally this was collected in an official manner but lately it has been left to the individual to manage on their own though Pakistan, the Sudan and Libya have recently formalized this in the form of a tax.
4. Fast of Ramadan – In the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset if their health permits. Neither food, nor drink nor sexual activity is permitted. The intent is to spend time during the month reflecting not only on the mercy of God but to contemplate the plight of those who are poor and hungry. At dusk a light meal is prepared (referred to as breakfast) and in the evening families visit and congregate for what is no doubt a larger than usual dinner. The mood seems exceptionally festive with special foods served only at Ramadan and prayers at Mosque. The month ends with a feast that is somewhat reminiscent of western Christmas.
5. Pilgrimage: The Hajj – After the month of Ramadan the month of Dhu al-Hijja signals the start of pilgrimage season. Once in their lifetimes Muslims must travel to Mecca to see the Kaba. The Kaba is a square house built around a sacred black stone. The Kaba is said to have been built by Ibrahim (Abraham) and Ismail around the stone given to them by the angel Gabriel representing God’s covenant with the Muslim people. The traditions of the Hajj are many:
1. circle the Kaba seven times (It’s not clear to me what this is symbolic of, if anything)
2. running between Safa and Marwa, two neighboring mounts, seven times symbolizing Hagar’s frantic search for water for her son Ismail. Most fascinatingly, if you do a quick image search for Safa and Marwa, you will find that an enclosed walkway has been built between them so pilgrims can walk without fear of the weather.
3. "stoning the devil" with the devil represented by three stone pillars
4. a visit to the plain of Arafat in which pilgrims stand from noon to dusk seeking forgiveness not only for themselves but for all Muslims
5. visiting the “Mount of Mercy” where the prophet made his last speech
6. the month of pilgrimage ends with a Feast of Sacrifice in which hundreds of animals are sacrificed and their meat given up to the poor
7. Lastly, the pilgrimage is a source of great pride among Muslims and some go so far as to prefix their names with ‘Hajji’ upon their return
6. The Struggle (jihad) – Unofficially, the sixth pillar of Islam is the jihad, or the struggle to realize God’s will on Earth. Most typically this takes the form of extending the Muslim community by education and preaching and leading by example by living a virtuous life. In the case of extremist groups, this has been taken to the extent of actual warfare against non-believers but that is not officially sanctioned by the Muslim community at large.

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Islam: The Straight Path – John L. Esposito [1998] – Chapter 3: Religious Life – Belief and Practice (Pt 1)

Below you will find my notes and random observations from the book indicated by the title of this post. It is hoped that it will be effortless to differentiate between those locations in which I provide information from the book proper and those in which I offer personal observation, illumination or pose further lines of inquiry. Whenever any doubt is evident it should be assumed that anything even remotely factual should be attributed to the author of the book and anything that would be construed as otherwise can be attributed to me personally.

Links to related posts: (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3])

The Muslim faith distinguishes itself from the Christian one very simply. Christians, Esposito says, are focused on “belief.” The main point of salvation is one of belief in Jesus Christ and acceptance of his gift of salvation. Muslims, contrarily, focus on actions. One cannot simply believe in the oneness of God but must also act according to God’s laws. Belief without action is meaningless to the Muslim. Personally, I would argue with the lackadaisical portrayal of Christians though I do see a difference in main focus between the two faiths.

One of the early formative questions of the Muslim faith is that of sinners. Is a sinner or even one who does not sin explicitly but simply does no good works truly a Muslim? Opinions on this differ, as we saw for the Kharijites earlier they would say that a sinner is not a Muslim while the Murjiites would claim, as many Christians do, that no one on Earth is fit to judge and that only God will be ultimate decider of such matters. Muslims also struggle with the question of free will as Christians have historically. If there is no free will, then how can man’s actions possibly be judged? If there is free will then how can God still be omnipotent? It’s unclear that any consistent answer for this paradox is ever arrived at.

The author goes on to describe a third set of Islamic beliefs in addition to the Murjiites and Kharijites. Contrarily to both these sects, the Mutazila strived for compromise. To them the Quran is metaphorical rather than literal. They used imported Greek philosophy and science to argue that the Quran was illustrative in scope but not to be taken verbatim. Contrarily, the Asharite argued against the rationalization of the Quran with the idea that some things are simply beyond human reason and understanding. Even this brief snapshot will help, I hope, to illustrate the diversity of the Muslim belief system. It is unclear (at least to current reading) how prevalent any of these sects are in the modern day.

After this brief overview of the players, Esposito goes on to talk a bit about the history of the Islamic law. Early on, of course, while the Prophet Muhammad was still around, he could (and often was) just asked his opinion. Unfortunately, this convenient state of affairs couldn’t exist indefinitely. After the death of the prophet the Umayyad Caliphate set up qadi or regional judges to determine such items of the law. This proved unsatisfactory, however, as it was argued that too much human opinion and regional difference was being inserted into what should have been very straightforward and uniform God-given law. Under the Abbasid Caliphate a further attempt was made to iron things out and gain some consistency. Now rather than leaving the determination of law to individual judges, Schools of Law were formed and tasked with determining exactly what the law should be. Somewhat predictably though, since the schools too were regional in nature, they also fell to petty squabbling and disagreement.

This continued until the appearance of Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shaffi (d. 819) the father of Islamic jurisprudence. Al-Shaffi wrote that there were four sources for Islamic law:
1. The Quran itself – The Quran does have some legalistic content but of course doesn’t cover every conceivable situation. Where it does speak to an issue, however, it is given absolute preeminence.
2. The Sunna (example of Muhammad) – at varying times ‘The Sunna’ was extended to mean the accepted behaviors of any group of Muslims but with al-Shaffi it was determined that only the acts and example of the Prophet himself constituted this second source of law. The argument for the position of the Prophet as the prime example flows from the very natural supposition that he was guided closely by God in his actions. Unfortunately, after the prophet’s death the corpus of literature which claimed to represent the Sunna blossomed into hundreds of thousands of documents which comprised a monumental task to actually validate. Esposito goes to great lengths to defend the Sunna as it’s currently accepted against Western critics who claim that it is almost entirely apocryphal.
3. Local consensus – Where the Sunna and the Quran are silent, local precedent and tradition must be heard. These tend to create regional differences and common examples given are centered around policies for divorce and dowry establishment.
4. Analytical Reasoning – Lastly, law can be established by logical deduction from stated laws that are deemed analogous to the situation being looked at. The example given was the establishment of a minimum dowry. The Quran doesn’t have anything to say about how much of a dowry should be given but the problem was solved logically in this way: when a woman is married, they argued, the loss to her is that of her virginity. To put a price on this, we make a correlation between the woman’s virginity and the amount goods that must be stolen in order to warrant the amputation of the thief’s limb. So the minimum dowry amount is the same as the amount of money one would have to steal in order to justify hacking off one’s arm. Let’s hope that the wedding night is slightly more pleasurable than an amputation.
With the help of al-Shaffi’s writings, Islamic law was completed by the 10th century and (based on current reading anyway) seems to have remained relatively fixed since that time.

Continued in Part 2…

Islam: The Straight Path – John L. Esposito [1998] – Chapter 2

Below you will find my notes and random observations from the book indicated by the title of this post. It is hoped that it will be effortless to differentiate between those locations in which I provide information from the book proper and those in which I offer personal observation, illumination or pose further lines of inquiry. Whenever any doubt is evident it should be assumed that anything even remotely factual should be attributed to the author of the book and anything that would be construed as otherwise can be attributed to me personally.


Note: In Chapter 2 our author goes about the daunting task of summing up 1000 years of Muslim history in a couple dozen pages. While I began with the goal of summing up his summary, it became quickly clear that further condensing of already condensed (and dense) material would likely be utterly impossible. Instead I will merely jot down a few conceptual notes.

Links to related posts: (Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 [Part 1][Part 2][Part 3])


Like its Christian neighbors, Islam is a religion that seeks actively to promote itself. Unlike Christianity, Islam prides itself on spreading its message with a tolerant rather than a destructive hand. The Quranic mandate is to transform the world, not destroy it. In the early Muslim conquests, the cities in conquered territories were given three choices:

1. Convert to Islam
2. Accept Muslim rule but pay a special tax to the ruling establishment
3. Fight it out and get decimated

In this way Christianity in conquered territories was disestablished officially but not specifically persecuted.

This tolerance left the Muslim world with four distinct social classes:

1. Arab Muslims – natively born Arabs of the Muslim faith
2. Non-Arab converts – those who converted to Islam after conquest of some sort. Quranically speaking, these converts were in fact equal to those who came to the faith by birth, but practices varied. Some divisions of Islam required these converts to pay the special taxes levied on non-Muslims. This proved to be one of the many sources of conflict within the religion.
3. Non-Muslim “People of the Book” – Christians, Jews, and their religious counterparts
4. Slaves – Generally, no Christian or Jew was allowed to be enslaved.

I’ve mentioned that the Muslims of the time were factional and the chapter goes on at some length on a few of the major players in Islamic politics. The Kharijites were strict Quranic literalists. They viewed any act of sin as a traitorous act against Islam. By this definition, every previous leader of Islam was viewed as a traitor on the grounds that they had not properly followed the rules of succession of leadership put forth in the Quran. The Shii, as have been previously described, believed in familial succession to leadership which is their primary point of difference with the Sunni. The Shii are lead by an Imam, a divinely inspired, sinless and infallible embodiment of Allah on Earth. They await the “Hidden Imam” or Mahdi as their savior. In addition, the Shii are also split off into the Ismailis whose primary distinguishing characteristic seems to be that they believe as the Shii do, but they believe themselves to be somehow special and elite from other Muslims. One cannot imagine why this would cause them to come into conflict with their brethren. Most uniquely, we have the Druze, a separatist faction that forbids intermarriage or conversion. Because of this their practices remained localized and untainted by any outside influences. They also differ in that they believe in a form of reincarnation. So with this diverse cast of characters, it is unsurprising that the next millennium of Islamic history was as unsettled as it turned out to be.

Muslim history is tangled and far beyond your blog-writer’s abilities, but I will attempt to summarize in brief. After the death of the prophet , the “Rightly Guided Caliphs” established themselves (632). Caliphs were established by vote among tribal elders. This met perfectly with Sunni expectations, but the Shii factions were unsatisfied that the original bloodline of the prophet was not honored. As a result of this and other internal disagreements, the reigns of the Caliphs tended to be brief and ended at unexpected times in unpleasant ways. In 661, the Umayyad Empire was formed at the end of an unusually bloody period. The ruled until 750 as a military aristocracy and were eventually replaced by the Abbasid Caliphate.

The Abbasid are sometimes referred to as the true Flowering of Islam. Under Abbasid rule and patronage, Islam truly came into its own and for once owed much of its success to conquest by trade and cultural domination rather than the sword. It is at this time that we find the formation of the Ulama, or religious professional elite who lead the final formalization of Muslim practice and the translation of the great works of the time into Arabic. It is particularly interesting that centuries later when Europe sought to regain its own lost cultural heritage, it was Arabic source material they found rather than their own relics. Unfortunately, due to the sheer scope of geography being ruled, the Abbasid Caliphate began to undergo significant political decline by 950.

Our author also goes on at length about the Muslim response to the Crusades, specifically in Jerusalem. The Arabs originally took the city in 638 and in so doing left the Christian and Jewish populaces largely unmolested. However, when Constantinople fell to the Arabs in 1071, it became widely feared that the event was only the vanguard of a larger effort that might end in the conquest of the entire Western World by the Arabs. So in response, a Crusade was undertaken in 1095 to retake Jerusalem. When the Crusaders arrived in 1099, they murdered every Muslim in evidence despite promises to the contrary and Muslim buildings were desecrated and converted to serve Christian purposes. In contrast, when Arab forces once again retook Jerusalem in 1187, typical Muslim mercy is displayed and Christian buildings and families are again left untouched. At the close of the Crusades, our author points out, the wars that were intended to unite the Christian faith under a common flag was now more fractured than ever by infighting and theological disagreements. When the Crusades officially ended in 1453 with the final fall of Constantinople, the Muslims, not the Christians, were the ones who stood united.

The rule of the Abbasid Caliphate ended officially with the sack of Baghdad by the Monguls in 1258. The remnants of the once great empire lingered in Egypt and Syria until 1517. By the 16th century, the Muslim world was split into three great Sultanates:

1. The Ottoman Turkish Empire centered in Istanbul covered much of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Eastern Europe. This Sultanate remained in one form or another until it was finally dissolved in the fallout from World War I.
2. The Persian Safavid Empire existed until 1736 in what is now Iran. It distinguished itself as having established Shii as its state religion
3. The Mughal Empire had its seat of power in Delhi, India and covered Pakistan, parts of India and Bangladesh. It was finally ousted officially from power by the British in 1857 when India was declared a British Commonwealth though the real transfer of power in the region had started long before.

Thus ends Chapter 2. It should be further noted that it is likely that I’ve just plain gotten something totally wrong in the summation above. Readers who note such inaccuracies should point them out so I can correct them or at the least feel bad about them and then quickly forget.

Back to Class

On Monday (two short days) I’m going to do something that I haven’t done in 17 years. (When I put it that way, and when I realize that’s almost half my life, I’m suddenly sad.) OK, so what’s the thing, you might ask? Well, to put it unexcitingly and finally just spill it, I’m going to go to a place of learning and take a class in something that’s not related to my work. In fact, it’s a class on a topic totally unrelated to my vocation. It’s a class just because I want to learn something that will probably never actually be profitable to me economically in any way. That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is the way in which people have reacted so far when I tell them this.

Universally, the first thing people say when I tell them I’m headed back to class is to express their envy that I actually have time to do this at all. Since I started getting this feedback, the realization has crept into my conscious just how much time I do have to myself to do… whatever… and to utilize this time at least a bit more productively. Even before people expressed this envy I had a lot of productivity guilt. I’d regularly look back on a day and say, “I had 6 hours of time that I wasn’t engaged in work or sleeping. What did I get out of it exactly?” I have a lot of difficulty “relaxing” or whatever it is the average person likes to do with their free time. Now that other people have expressed to me the perceived value of my underutilized hours, I find myself guarding it much more jealously and in many ways I put it to better use. My previous retrospective guilt over the waste of this precious commodity has become proactive and now I feel much more satisfied with the use of it. The unintended impacts of people’s random comments is endlessly fascinating.

Now all this does bring up a couple of related concepts. Firstly, I’ve written several times that the average person actually has much more free time than they want to admit and that they choose intentionally to put themselves in situations in which they lose this commodity. For example, if you have a yard that rivals the size of some golf courses, you shouldn’t be surprised if you have to spend a lot of time mowing it. Those with twelve kids need not be shocked that they spend much of their time shuttling people to ballet class. I can’t help but point out, however, that the majority of topics which consume our free time are mentally passive ones. In today’s media-saturated world, that’s no excuse. You can easily find a podcast about medieval French ballet to listen to on the mower. Those twelve kids might enjoy learning Russian with you in the car on the way to their activity. It can be done, and, I would argue, it should be done. It sets a good example for those around you and, I’d further insist, an intellectually growing parent is a good parent. I see far too often parents who forget to take care of themselves both physically and intellectually in the name of raising their children. This does them a great disservice and denies their children a fulfilled and happy and growing parent in their lives. That, however, is a topic better left explored in another post.

The second subtopic is to wonder exactly what actually constitutes a “productive” activity. Is productivity anything that’s not just sitting and watching television? If I come home, cook dinner, exercise, finish the book I was reading, write a review of it, edit a batch of pictures, upload them and put together a narrative blog post for them all before 11pm, is that *REALLY* productive or is it just busy? What’s the standard here? Does a productive activity have to be financially profitable or does fiscally neutral suffice? Does it have to be intellectually broadening and if so, what exactly does that even mean? I could probably learn something from watching a reality show in MTV. Does THAT count as productive if I now know more about waterproof mascara than I did before? Clearly this is all a personal judgment but it’s still one that I struggle with. Somewhat scarily, my opinion on this topic does seem to change from one day to the next. I sincerely wonder how I will look back on myself a decade from now and judge my use of time.

At any rate, photography class starts Monday. I will not fail to document the process. It will be interesting to see if this is the first of many or simply the first.

Online Identity Crisis

In the past month I’ve taken advantage of Facebook’s generosity three times. The first time I created a page for The Tattered Thread, my blog of almost a decade. The second time I created a page for At the Bijou, my short-lived desire to see and write about every new movie in the theatres. The third time I created Rob Slaven Photography, a pseudonym for my tendency to take photographs of everything in the universe… at least that small subset of things in the universe that I can set a camera lens to.

In the end and with the help of an absurd book written by a comedian, I’ve come to realize that all of this is simply a search for validation: an attempt to find some group of people who will say by way of word or deed, “you’re doin’ good, Mr. Slaven!” Part of me realizes quite plainly that I don’t care what I do. If the masses want me to write, I shall write. If they want me to go take pictures, I shall do that. The validation I seek is not internal so much as it is external. Perhaps in no small way this goes back to my mother who failed to appreciate me no matter WHAT I did. So now I flail somewhat hopelessly in an attempt to fill that blank and yawning void with the approval of others. Apparently the nascent approval of the maternal is more important than we care to admit.

Somewhat recently though, Laura brought up with me a good point. She said simply that what I really needed was internal approval. I needed to be proud of myself and that would trump any vacuous leftovers I might have from my own upbringing. Nobody could fill the void I felt except me, she said simply. And I will not deny that she is right. But the problem is that I am such a relentless taskmaster. To feel even an iota of self-validation I need to create something momentous. I hold myself to an epic standard rather than a modern one. Every non-productive moment that creeps by is a pain, a sin, a terrible affront to the legacy of humankind that brought me to where I am now.

So where does this leave me? I am not, honestly, all that sure. Clearly, there are some fads which need to be allowed to die. I have puttered about with The Tattered Thread for 10 years but the hallmark of that small and unheard-of publication is that you never quite know what you are going to get on any given day. It is as fluid and as unpredictable I am. One day you might be reading about copper-age warfare and the next you might be assailed by a prolix description of the latest vampire movie. While I can’t claim to have, in fact, any following at all, I do have several years of history to live up to. And while the majority of people who wander on to my blog couldn’t give two rats shits about what I’ve done over the past decade I can say with sincerity that I *DO* care. Deeply. Passionately. This is my history. More history, frankly, than I can personally remember. The devoted reader of this open missive to the universe will probably know more about ME than *I* actually know about ME. Having been in your position as reader, however, I don’t honestly expect you to take that much interest. It’s too much. One cannot live one’s own life and consume that of another. It cannot be done. I get that. I’m flattered that whoever you are, dear reader, you have taken even this much time.

As for the photography, as I look back on my history, I realize that I’ve been at that for a solid three years. I look back at those first pictures and I can’t help but feel a pain in my gut. I look back at those pictures from a week ago and I still can’t help but feel a pain in my gut. Some days I look at my output and think, “Damn. I fucking suck at this” and other times I look at my pics and think, “Damn. I fucking rock.” Perhaps this is the nature of any endeavor. I can say without a doubt that I’ve gotten better over the years. Compared to my early attempts at photography, I’m a photographic genius. Trial and error have left their mark, though I’m sure many would rightly argue that the mark hasn’t been deep enough.

The point is though that I have no standard. By the standard of history, I would vanish utterly. I would have tried my utmost in writing, in photography and if I died today there would be none to remember me at all. None. Silence. Yet part of me thinks that if I don’t accomplish more then I will be a failure. I hold myself to some idiotic standard that if I don’t paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel then I should not have even bothered to have lived at all. In my own mind, no matter what reasonable thing I do, I am too small to have mattered. In the end, I am still a small child who looks expectantly up to his mother but is still too small and too inconsequential and too much of a bother to have mattered.

So after all this I can only say that I think the correct thing is to continue on in the two paths I have chosen even if nobody ever bothers to notice. When I am at my best, I can write, and write well. I’ve been told at work that I need to “tone it down,” that my writing is too elevated to actually be understood widely. I’ll choose to take that as a compliment. On the note of photography, I receive precious little feedback. This is either because my output is so terrible as to not justify a response or that people have come to expect excellence and therefore they say nothing. To feed my own ego, I will assume the latter. If the former is the case then more practice is the only relevant remedy. Either way, I will continue to assiduously and continuously photograph everything that comes into my view.

Returning back to practicalities, those of you are interested in my verbal outputs, should pay your homage to The Tattered Thread page on Facebook. There I will continue to push my observations in whatever form they present themselves. Those who wish for more visual media have Rob Slaven Photography to sate their needs. I will not be offended in the least by any who choose to pursue one in deference to the other. Each of us has a muse who speaks to us with most primal force and I will not think less of anyone who listens most keenly to one but neglects the other. As I sit here pondering the darkness of the night on September the 5th, like countless men before me, I can’t help but wonder about the meaning of it all. What will history, a thousand years from now, think of any of us? Are we vapid, squalid mewling infants in the view of history? It’s idiotically broad and rhetorical thoughts like this that make me realize that I have been out of society far too long. Thank the powers that be, whether they be, God or the random machinations of the universe that I start a new class on the 12th. It has been far too long that I have been out of the normal circulation of society.

Movies – The Help – 2011

Today Laura and I wandered out to an early afternoon movie and for a chance, we chose one intentionally. Also of note is that for the first time in a while the theatre wasn’t empty except for your faithful reviewer. By the time the movie had started the theatre was at least half full and it was interesting to note the difference that this made in the whole movie-going experience. Crowds are like sentient beings all on their own so in a way this crowd took on a life of its own and we all seemed to react together in the same way at the same time. It is part of the movie-going experience that one misses when at home or in an out-of-the-way location.

“The Help” is a merciless and poignant view of the life of black servant-class people in Jim Crow era Jackson, Mississippi. I am not a person generally prone to displays of great emotion but it was all the willpower I could muster at several points in the movie to not openly weep. It is a merciful circumstance that movie theatres are dark and private places. This movie moves in a way that very few ever have before and as I walked from the place I wanted sincerely to shake the hand of every person of black descent I met on the way out. The portrayal of the unjust and heartless treatment of southern servants of color during this era was just about all I could bear to watch.

Aside from the sheer emotions evoked, the movie also raised some interesting psychological questions. In these circumstances, white children of privilege were practically raised by black servants and came to view many of them as more parental than their own parents. Given this, how was it that they somehow managed to uphold the horrible injustice of the situation for so many generations? Similarly, it seems that on some level many of the characters were against the treatment received by blacks in the area yet they sat quietly and did nothing while secretly objecting. How can such implication by non-action by tolerated? Sadly this sort of thing is endemic in human history and this movie’s depiction of the circumstance should be applauded.

Overall, I feel confident in saying that this movie is among the best of the year. It’s heart-wrenching portrayals (though mixed with a bit of seemingly inappropriate comedic breaks) of life in the era were flowing and organic and natural and evoked real regret for their accuracy in the audience. As the credits rolled, the audience in the theatre I was in just sat stunned in contemplation of what they’d seen. This is truly a movie to be seen and shared and applauded. I can’t rank it highly enough.

Movies: Another Earth – 2011

As a general rule, it can be assumed that any movie with the word ‘Earth’ in the title is either an environmental allegory or a science fiction fantasy. “Another Earth” is anything but. While having a slight sci-fi bent with the discovery of a nearly identical copy of the Earth in the solar system, tonight’s movie was more an anthropological investigation than space exploration.

On the day that a new Earth is discovered in the heavens as a tiny, taunting blue spec, our protagonist’s life takes a fateful twist. In the space of a few seconds her dreams of going to MIT are traded for a prison jumpsuit as she is involved in a fatal collision with another vehicle due to her own intoxication. As the movie develops the twin Earth grows closer and our heroine struggles to cope with the repercussions of that pivotal event in her life.

Symbolically the movie gives us the approaching planet as a symbol of redemption and opportunity for rebirth after failure. We also get a chance to see the impact of the realization that we are not, as a species, alone in the universe. Society stands enraptured at the possibility of getting to know the “other” Earthlings. This is a movie that lives on after the viewing in the form of the conversations that result.

At a technical level the execution of the film was amazing. The music, photography and storyline worked in perfect harmony to advance the narrative in the film in a way I’ve very seldom seen in any modern movie. Unfortunately, due to the mistaken belief that this is a science fiction film and its very non-Hollywood ending, I’m expecting the film to fare poorly at the box office. Despite that, this movie earns a very satisfied 9 stars out of 10 from this reviewer.

Movies: Conan the Barbarian – 2011

This evening wins a very small and very silly prize for drama. I realized at 5:03 that the $5 movie theatre down the street started a round of movies at around 5:00 so I jetted from my place of work at 5:04 and dashed into the theatre at 5:19 just in time to enjoy five minutes of silence before Conan the Barbarian started. Well, to say it with a more hearty and satisfying grain of truth, five minutes of silence before the 20 minutes of previews started.

The Previews

This particular venue is not only desperately quiet before the movie but also pounds down the previews like an addict at a Methadone clinic. Tonight’s total was six and started with “Red Tails” which seems to be following on the coattails of other war movies featuring under-appreciated units made up entirely of minorities. This time it’s WWII African-American fighter pilots. I can’t resist a war movie of any type so it’ll probably have my $5 when the time comes. Next we had “Ghost Rider” a movie with such a twisted and confusing preview that I’m not sure if the self-immolating skull-faced dude is a hero or a villain. We have established, however, based on the preview alone that if you take a whizz while you’re on fire it does hurt. (No, I’m not just making that up to be funny.) “Immortals” seems to be a standard epic adventure mythology flick. The new hero of the week seems to be Theseus and he’s going to save the world or destroy it or something similarly stimulating. Next up was “Drive” which seems to be one of your typical plotless thug movies. Somebody beats up somebody else to get something. Yadda, yadda, yadda. There’s also a new Sherlock Holmes movie coming out it seems making ready to make me spout profanity as I leave the theatre about how completely they’ve destroyed the spirit of the original Conan Doyle genre. And lastly, “Warrior” is apparently one of those stories about a war vet who comes home, doesn’t have any money and decides to become a UFC fight champion to make money to save the house or farm or pay for grandma’s operation. Whichever it is the preview, was nice enough to give away the climax in which the guy has to fight his own brother in the finals. What a devious twist! Pity they told me that BEFORE I gave them the $5.


The Movie

So now after 20 minutes we get down to the movie which, as you will no doubt be unsurprised to learn, is your standard adventure slash-em up western-but-with swords bit. People with impossibly white teeth (and some with no eyebrows) fight each other, heal impossibly fast and fall from impossible heights without any harm whatsoever. Easy enough.

Excessively high level summaries aside, just take the Lord of the Rings and replace it with a weird squiggly, tentacle mask and you’ve about got it. In the beginning (ages and ages ago), evil necromancers (what’s any movie without necromancers, after all) created a terrible mask that they wished to use to enslave the whole world. Well, the barbarian tribes got wind of this and so they united and had a huge and terrible war. As a result they destroyed the mask and broke it into a dozen pieces that they scattered through the world under the protection of the tribes. That takes you up through about the opening credits.

Ages go by and people are still fighting about things but not always about the latest in fashion headgear. In one of these petty squabbles, Conan’s mother, herself a great warrior, is grievously wounded. With her last dying words, the pregnant woman gasps, “I want to see my baby before I die!” so in what I can only describe as the clumsiest C-section ever, Conan’s father plunges his sword into his wife’s abdomen without even looking down and within seconds has produced the instantly wailing infant. Conan’s mother quickly expires from the botched surgery while his father wails his grief that he didn’t pay more attention in nursing school.

More years go by and Conan (that’s pronounced COnan like Conan O’Brien, btw, not coNAN like that OTHER barbarian) grows into a boy. He wants to be a warrior so he and the other children his age are set a challenge. They must take an egg in their mouths and run around some mountain and the first one back without breaking the egg gets to be a warrior. So the boys run out some distance, then stop to beat the shit out of one another and break everyone else’s eggs when suddenly they’re attacked by a band of 7 or 8 large brutal-looking men twice their size. The other boys, of course, wisely run away but Conan wades in and decapitates the whole lot of bandits. In dramatic fashion, Conan arrives back at the village carrying the warrior’s heads and casually spits his unbroken egg on the ground. It’s at about this point that we’re supposed to believe he’s quite a bad-ass.

Well, as you might expect, not long after, some new evil dude decides he’s going to do the Blues Brothers thing and “put the mask back together.” He arrives at Conan’s village having gotten all but the last piece. Evil dude’s armies descend on Conan’s village (which has managed to field quite a sizeable fighting force considering it’s just a tiny village) and bloodshed ensues. It is at about this point that the movie engages in one of my personal movie pet peeves. Either through some complete failure in logic or a flaw in the editing process, evil dude sends in his horsemen, then he sends in his footmen and THEN he lets the town have it with the archers. It is just this sort of disregard for basic military protocol that makes the infantry cut all the archer’s bowstrings the night before a big fight. Evil dude’s footmen don’t want arrows in their backs either. Anyway, long story short, evil dude gets the last piece of the mask, Conan’s dad gets melted to death by a small vat of molten steel that seems to just stay hot FOREVER and evil dude escapes. Conan, however does too but not before he manages to cut the nose off of one of evil dude’s cohorts.

So flash forward several more years and Conan has buffed up into quite the justice-dealing hunk of man meat. We find him first fighting to free a colony of slaves by rolling boulders down from the mountains onto the camp. Doubtless he’d forgotten that groups of slaves chained together or in cages tend to suffer more from falling rocks than guards who can move about more freely, but his heart is in the right place. Conan and his merry band go on to free the slaves including several dozen topless women who remain topless for several minutes as they carouse in celebration. It’s not exactly clear WHY any of them are topless but it’ll certainly make the television edit of the movie shorter.

Conan now starts to pick up clues about the man who killed his father all those years ago. He tracks down one after another without any really notable results except when he finds the man whose nose he cut off as a boy. By now the guy’s wearing a leather face-bra to protect the hole in his face and when Conan finds him he takes the opportunity to shove his finger into the hole until an unpleasantness ensues. Apparently it’s not fatal unpleasantness, however, since Conan has a more brutal method of execution in mind for him. Mr. no-nose runs a slave community so Conan forces him to swallow the key to the front gates and then pushes him out amongst his slaves to be thoroughly “searched” for the key.

Alright, my patience with this movie nearly exhausted, we move into really fast-forward mode. Conan finally finds evil dude and his daughter (a witch). They have the standard cliché fights: fight in an impossible physical situation (this time on a large rotating wheel), fights involving two swords each, a fight between Conan and some sand djinns summoned by the witchy daughter, fight with a monster in a dungeon with a bunch of tentacles. Between fights, Conan manages to schtoop the pretty girl and say those magical words: “I live, I love, and I slay. I am content.”

All in all, it was exactly what you would expect. Excessive gore and insufficient plot but I will say that it had my attention. It was, of course, entirely and utterly predictable but it did have moments of amusement. The eye candy factor was fairly high and on that account I give it a five out of ten. It’s a movie that I will very soon forget, but it’s one that I paid five dollars for and you can’t take that away from it.

Movies: Alfred Hitchcock’s : “Easy Virtue” – 1928 [silent]

It’s been an entire day since I resolved to watch and review all the Hitchcock films and I’ll admit that his 1928 silent film was an initial challenge to my resolve. In this day and age of HD video and theatre-quality sound, watching a film with no real audio takes a surprising amount of concentration. As if that isn’t enough, it’s even clearer how far we’ve come in the intervening century when you can’t help but notice that even the edges of the screen fade in and out of view because the illumination is inconsistent. Quite a bit is left to the imagination and in some ways, that’s a good thing. In other ways, watching a movie at 11pm that requires this much concentration is just asking for trouble.

The plot synopsis is fairly standard, though it reveals a sensibility that we would today find boggling. Larita Filton is in the midst of a divorce from her drunkard husband and at the same time ensnarled in a bit of impropriety with a painter (Claude) who has been commissioned to do her portrait. Larita does finally escape her marriage but her honor and reputation is sullied forever when she’s “found guilty of misconduct” with Claude. Her reputation in tatters, she escapes to the French Riviera. There she meets John who falls desperately and almost immediately in love with her. Larita keeps mum about her past and only John’s mother suspects that something might not be on the up-and-up. The couple are quickly married but not shortly after, the meddling mom finds a picture of Larita in the paper and the connection with her scandalous past is made. Remaining married is, of course, unthinkable and Larita steps aside so that John can divorce with his honor intact.

Despite the lack of actual audible dialog, the movie doesn’t suffer from a vacuum of memorable quotes. Early on, the love interest, Claude, writes Larita a love note and it’s as sappy and as generic as could be possibly imagined:

Darling,
Why suffer that foul brute when you know I’d give anything I have in the world to make you happy?
--Claude

Near the end, the Larita spars with John’s mother in a manner so standard between generations that it’s almost cliché:

Mother: In our world we do not understand this code of Easy Virtue
Larita: In your world you understand very little of anything

Larita’s position is summed up quite nicely by her closing line: “Shoot, there’s nothing left to kill!” Her virtue lost, her prospects dim, there is nothing else for her to live for. Sensibilities have certainly changed, haven’t they?

Visually, there are a few interesting moments as well. During some of Larita’s time in the Riviera she takes in a few sporting events and it occurred to me as I watched (somewhat bored, honestly) that audiences of the time might very well have been fascinated by the prospect of watching filmed sport. With the cinema still a relatively new and novel art, things we find mundane today would doubtless have been viewed with breathless wonder. Also, earlier on, John anticipates the response to his proposal from Larita by phone and we’re treated to an extended segment of the telephone operator connecting their call and then reacting as she listens in on their conversation. These are images of a day long, long past.

To close, while I’ll admit that I didn’t find much Hitchcock in “Easy Virtue” I did find plenty of 1928 which is almost as good. While these bygone relics don’t entertain in the way that modern movies do, they do act to make us think and help us to know where society has gone before. Whether these changes are progress or regress is left as an exercise to the viewer.